


Repair Jobs (Here and Now Remix)

by Trobadora



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode: s10e09 Empress of Mars, Gen, TARDIS POV, background Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 20:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12153897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: The TARDIS always goes where she needs to be. - Set duringEmpress of Mars.





	Repair Jobs (Here and Now Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Repair Jobs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8603440) by [AuroraCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/pseuds/AuroraCloud). 



Here/now, the TARDIS cannot be. The TARDIS cannot stay. She knows because she hasn't, she won't. Time and space is a song, the notes spread out before her: seeing all-at-once and singing one at a time. Time flows, through her and around her, and as she alters the flow, she is altered by it. Here/now, on Mars, time says she cannot stay. 

Her thief, her Doctor, must wait. They both wait, have waited, will wait for each other, finding and being found, running from and to and with. Here/now, she cannot run with him.

She goes, is going, will have gone, where she must. She is there, materialised.

Hands on her console, the cyborg's, a friend's. Inexpert and friendly, meaning well. He sees when/where they are, back on Earth, outside the Vault, and tries to return. Dematerialisation circuits attempt to activate. The TARDIS powers down.

Reset. Nardole's hands, attempting dematerialisation. She powers down.

Reset. Nardole's hands, attempting dematerialisation. She powers down.

Reset. Nardole's hands, attempting dematerialisation. She powers down.

She cannot listen to his words, his entreaties. She will not listen, has not listened, must not listen. Here/now, a future imperative awaits.

She ignores his hands, his pleas. She is here. Here is when she must be. She is, as always, where she needs to be. 

Nardole leaves. Any moment now, future will have become past.

~*~

Doors opening: the TARDIS wants to resist. Future says open. Fear says run.

She has run before, from something more terrifying than a Time Lord, here-and-now-always-and-ever wrapped in a human body unable to die. She ran to the end of time, and there _he_ was waiting - the Master, only a Time Lord but worse than eternity, worse than time and space nailed down to a single spot.

She has run before. She is not running now.

He comes, the Master, old and white-haired, regenerating at her very console. He comes, young again, bright and burning with starlight and cruelty, with destruction. She comes, comes again, all of him/her/them, walks inside. 

The TARDIS has exploded, once/never. Her death has been a sun. She has learned to carry eternity in her shell without fear. She is not running now.

The Master in the TARDIS, again: for the first time in decades, breathing air not of a single time, a single place. A TARDIS is always _more_ , the Vortex her home. For the Master, linear time has stretched long and straight in a timeline unaccustomed to it. No more.

But there is no awe in her, the Mistress, like no other person stepping inside the TARDIS's shell. Even her thief, her Doctor, after centuries, after millennia, never forgets his awe, his joy at her-with-him, her-for-him, together/bound, running together.

The Mistress forgot awe, long ago. Delight she knows, has known, will always know. But she has no awe, never awe, and she is not safe.

Yet the TARDIS will have let Missy inside. More than inside. Something that will be. 

Unless she runs. Unless here/now becomes never, and time turns in different ways. She does not run. Yet.

The Mistress ignores Nardole's words. Her hands on the controls, attempting dematerialisation. The TARDIS powers down.

"Told you so," says Nardole.

She/he/they, the same and not. He who ripped her apart. She who hasn't/won't/might not. Will she? The TARDIS doesn't know. She only knows she must be here/now, if things are to be right.

What is _right_? A question for different minds. But she wants it, for her thief, for her Doctor. 

"Shut up," says Missy. "And stay away while I work. I will not take responsibility for any acts of random destruction perpetrated on people who should be elsewhere. Are we understood?"

Glare meets retreat. The Mistress climbs under the console, examines the circuits. There is/has been/will be no fault in the wiring, no overload, no blockage in the energy feeds, though they haven't had a servicing in too long. It is only her will that keeps the TARDIS still. 

"Why are you doing this?" Missy mutters. "Running away from the Doctor now?"

Missy's hands buried in her circuits, where he assaulted her before. He did that, the Master - made her screaming red distorted, cloister bell ringing, a paradox twisting in her guts. The same hands - not the same, another regeneration's, yet the same in all the ways that matter to a TARDIS - carefully examining, testing, finding nothing wrong.

Hands in her circuits. The TARDIS wants to send a surge through the feeds, wants to repel, wants to run.

It did not work the last time. It would not have worked now. And she has not run, will not run, is not running.

Hands in her circuits. Kinder hands, friendlier hands would be welcome. Her Doctor's, though he does not like maintenance, not on his own. But in company, yes. With the Fact that saved her, after the Master: Jack, no longer terrifying, his bullets destroying the paradox the Master had made of her. Jack and the Doctor, afterwards, repairing. Before, even - eternity, before it was eternal, the Fact, before the fact. 

Energy feeds in need of maintenance. Nostalgia. Soothing.

She flickers a hologram to life, her memory for seeing eyes. 

_"A perfect day for TARDIS repairs," the Doctor says, grinning at Jack, corners of his mouth pointing to his ears. Holding up a toolbox._

_"You want me to help fixing your ship?" asks Jack, young, mortal, incredulous. All his future timelines not yet visible in him, the universe not yet rewritten for him. Not a Fact, and not a Fact-to-be: human, ordinary, then._

Missy draws back, put upon. 

"Him?" she asks. "Freaky Jack?" Her face is the twist of a timeline to avoid, the taste of a rip in the Vortex. 

"Who's he?" Nardole asks, safely out of her reach. She ignores him.

The TARDIS lets the hologram lurch, abrupt and jarring. _"You want me to help fixing your ship?" asks Jack, young, mortal, incredulous._

"Is that supposed to be a hint?" Missy asks, then rolls her eyes. "Oh dear, am I talking to TARDISes now? The Doctor's really starting to rub off on me, isn't he." Teeth, bared in a smile. A song: "Wouldn't he like to know it!" 

"Er," says Nardole. A glare stalls his circuits, his biological parts. "I won't tell, all right? I won't tell," he babbles, and the Mistress turns away, satisfied.

The hologram is hands now, Jack's hands, and the sound is the Doctor's voice, explaining the energy feeding system in very small words. 

_She_ needs no guidance, no explanations. The Master knows as much or more than the Doctor, when it comes to a TARDIS. Yet her hands remain still, her head tilted, face pinched. Listening: to words that slow down as the hands speed up, get ahead of the explanation. Words that speed up again, getting more enthusiastic, more real. Not explaining, not any more: rambling excited, a sharing.

"Must you? Really?" the Mistress says. But her face has grown wistful, listening to the Doctor's voice. But her hands are already at work now, pulling the maintenance kit from where it was stowed, ages ago. 

"Once," she says, and cold-and-brittle shivers through her voice. "One time I'm playing your game, then we're leaving. I'll make you. You know I can."

A sudden energy spike surges through the system, and Missy pulls her hand back, hisses in pain. 

"You know I can," she repeats, harsh now, threatening. "I can make you go _anywhere_. No more Vault, no more Doctor. Let's get rid of the egg-headed one, and it'll be just you and me. Remember that?"

Nardole shifts against the wall, fingers reaching for a weapon.

But here/now is not his moment. Here/now is for the TARDIS. There is not, will never be no more Doctor: the TARDIS will not allow it. There will never be just-you-and-me, not with _the Master_. Never again.

Energy surges again, crackling. A fuse blows. The hologram jumps again, jumps into the Mistress's face.

_Jack, looking at the TARDIS with awe._

_A snatch of the Doctor's voice: "She's been very haphazard lately about where and when we end up. Probably something here is burning itself out."_

"Is that supposed to be a threat?"

Repeat: _Jack, looking at the TARDIS with awe._

_A snatch of the Doctor's voice: "She's been very haphazard lately about where and when we end up. Probably something here is burning itself out."_

"Didn't know TARDISes could be sarcastic."

Repeat: _The Doctor's voice. "She's been very haphazard lately about where and when we end up. Probably something here is burning itself out."_

_"Oh, I thought that was just your driving," Jack returns._

A sudden, barked laugh, Missy looking surprised at herself. 

"Point to the poodle, I suppose," she says, wry. "And to you, you silly old thing. Might make _him_ do some maintenance, why don't you?" And she bends back toward the circuits with her tools.

~*~

The Mistress straightens. The energy feeding system feels sparkling-fresh, scrubbed and new. "All right. Enough of that now."

Now. Now/here/now. It is, will have been, must be now.

The TARDIS cannot know what or why. She only knows it's now and here, the moment, the pivot, the future imperative. Something that must be, something that will turn. Turn somewhere. Will have turned, in only a tiny linear moment, which is now.

Missy, standing at the console, looking down at the controls. "I can make you, you know," she says.

The TARDIS shoves another hologram into her face. 

_The Doctor and Jack: close, too close, just close enough, feeling each other's breath. Wrists held in hands. Jack's back against the TARDIS walls. Mouth on mouth, ravenous, claiming._

The Mistress recoils. Somewhere out of her sight, but not the TARDIS's, Nardole's eyes widen, watching.

_The Doctor and Jack: kissing._

Missy bares her teeth. "I could make you stop doing that, too."

The kissing repeats. Repeats. Repeats. Repeats.

Missy's expression grows tighter, tighter, tighter. It will snap. Where will it snap?

Tightness grows tighter. It twitches. It stalls. It doesn't snap; it loosens, gradually. It grows softer. Missy smiles. 

Smiles, snorts, giggles. She bends over the console, laughter in her stomach spilling out. "Is that," she gasps, "is that why he likes you? You're a laugh a minute, you are."

There was no laughter, before. No real laughter, only madness. There was only burning and screaming, fury and glee and hurt.

Now. Now/here/now. The pivot: now.

Now: the Mistress's hands on the controls, laughter in her eyes, initiating dematerialisation. And the Vortex takes them away. To then/there, which will be here/now. To Mars. 

To the Doctor.


End file.
